MORNING
Did my property value just triple? The city, within two hours of the other, announced the rezoning of the area around my old mobile home (from 2006, remember that?) and the approval of a new civic or arts center on “publicly owned land”. You don’t have to be Albert Frankenstein to figure out what is going on. But I am surprised they are so brazen, considering the recent rash of politicians being hauled in for graft. In the case of Hollywood, it simply means they have adequately covered their
Nearby you can see the solar panel regulator referred to in last day’s stern lecture. That’s the gizmo I’m pointing at, and you can see the various tests these are put through before they get any approval around here. The panel, just visible along the top edge, is putting out 12.67 volts in the shade. We cannot measure how “light” it is outside, but we know how to relate it to the voltage. This reading, we know, is the arithmetic mean for your average Florida day.
This photo is in response to those who knew I would not leave you hanging on the topic of this regulator (properly called a "charge controller"). They will have noticed three meters, not one. A few may rate this as overkill, but just possibly we’ve learned a thing or two. That rings true if you noticed the meter in the lower left is malfunctioning. Unless the solar panel is putting out 162 volts, in which case I’m rich, we have a low internal battery condition or a blown meter. No problem, the club has a drawer full of fresh batteries and a cabinet full of new meters, the kind given away as promos from Harbor Freight.
And this morning was a review of how music rehearsal went last evening. This is not any review of the musicians, but a standard procedure over my years of teaching. The thing to watch for is potential, remember that Trent is almost completely new to bass-playing. And he’s leaping in far ahead of the beginner’s level because I’m not insisting he learn notes and scales. To further complicate his chores, he is learning the version of bass I would play, without the twenty-five years I needed to work things out. We will never be recording artists, but nor is that what we are aiming for.
I never bothered to look, but because Trent was curious, we visited the website of the old band I left two months ago. Like I figured, they are having tremendous difficulties finding another bassist. That is due to their outdated music and their inflexible concept of a band. Particularly that the bassist is a cog in a machine they otherwise unconditionally own and operate. Of all the bands I’ve played in, this one learned the least from me.
If they had given me a fair chance, we would have been up and playing in six months. As was pointed out, never once in the year and a half we rehearsed did they ever learn or incorporate a single suggestion from my direction. To anyone who knows me, that is a methodical and calculated blockade that defies human nature. And that, my friends, is so bizarrely strange in its own proportion that I won’t even go there.
Most amusing, however, is the way they cut me out of the promo photos. They are now a four piece, with the piano man playing bass. He is a super-talented keyboard player, but I personally know what must be unlearned for a piano man to handle a bass. It rarely works—however may I say for that band, such [an arrangement] is about as much bass playing as they will ever need. If you get my meaning.
They seemed oblivious to the world-class job I was doing. That gives me the right to be a smart-ass here and say, "Of course they cut out my picture." Because they got plenty of experience cutting out video scenes where I got an ovation and the rest of the band did not. Bwaaaaa-ha-ha-ha!
NOON
What a long afternoon, working on the solar panels and drilling the metal on the camper frame. I would not have done any such work a year ago. But now I have the two most necessary tools: experience and confidence. Shown here is one drilled 10mm bolt hole (look for the filings), the other marked for a pilot hole. The time invested learning pilot holes was a good move. There is more to the technology than you think. On the other hand, look how exact is the first such big hole I ever drilled. There turned out to be a metal rib on the underside that took another hour to work around.
Here's something. The length of the new planned cPod is not enough to accomodate the 48" of roof surface required for the large solar panels. The internal works are geared to that wattage, so fewer panels is not an option. The new roof is just 40" long. The panels must be very secure to be towed at 65 mph, so no overhang is permitted. Stay tuned to see how this problem eventually gets solved.
As I said I would, I have moved from basic celestial navigation to intermediate level. I can now always find my position within 60 nautical miles with ease. What is intermediate? Well, from what I read—and I regard reading as the first step on anything of this kind—it is mainly refinements of what went before. One begins to allow for variations in temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and even the distance to the sun’s orbit, which is an ellipse. This is for now purely an academic exercise, as it merely refines the sextant readings.
For a break, I read up on Soviet era spies, which got their big start after the German invasion. Prior to that, their purpose was to spread communism, not collect military secrets. They got most information from a few well-placed agents, but for the most part, the rest were as incompetent a lot as our own CIA. The spies in Berlin were issued with radios with a 600 mile range. The problem is, Moscow was 800 miles away. Wait, there’s more.
So they would transmit coded messages to listening stations along the border, where those people would decode the message and relay it on in plain text. With the Germans listening in. The Soviets cleaned all this up pretty fast, I have to admit, but it still reads like a comedy.
Have you heard the new Nicki Minaj video banned in Canada? Seems the Jews don’t like the imagery. And as we know, the Jews are the only political lobby that has ever succeeded in getting away with ideological censorship. But this time I agree the video should be banned. Because I heard the “music”. As usual, the lyrics are totally concerned with the seamier aspects of sex from a black woman’s point of view. While romance may not be an exclusively European invention, it is not present in these rap videos.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
